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Prayer vigils in Virginia call for end to death penalty

Carol Zimmermann | Catholic News Service

Participants take part in a Jan. 22, 2021, prayer vigil to end death penalty in Norfolk, Va. CNS photo/courtesy Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy

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At some of the prayer vigils for an end of the death penalty
in Virginia Jan. 22 — held in locations across the state, including sites where
lynchings took place — the names of those killed were read aloud.

 Niedringhaus, a Catholic retiree from McLean, Virginia, said
this litany of names goes along with what Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St.
Joseph of Medaille and longtime activist against the death penalty, has
stressed about the need to know the names of people who have been executed
because not knowing them makes them seem less human.

 “As someone who was raised Catholic, the idea that all
people are created in the image and likeness of God is a phrase that is
indelible in my brain,” she said.

 Looking at capital punishment from the lens of faith, she
said, there isn’t any way “we can say this is OK.”

 Niedringhaus, a member of PAX, a Catholic intentional
eucharistic community said Jan. 25 that her own opposition to the death penalty
is “deeply spiritual.” But she knows she is not alone in this, noting
that the religious representation at vigils across the state brought together
“all these different faith traditions all rooted in justice.”

 She took part virtually in the livestreamed prayer vigil in
Richmond, Virginia, held near the historical marker for the former state
penitentiary where executions took place from 1908 to 1990. The property is now
the site of Afton Chemical Co.

 Other vigils were held in Alexandria, Roanoke, Danville and
Norfolk, organized by the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy and led
by local faith leaders as a way to highlight the current movement in the state
to abolish the death penalty and to show a connection between capital
punishment and the state’s history of racial injustice.

 Organizers pointed out that Blacks represent about 19
percent of the state’s population but make up 34 percent of those executed in
the state.

 The gatherings, at noon Jan. 22, brought about 20 people to
each location. In Richmond, participants held up signs against the death
penalty and spoke from a microphone competing with the traffic on a busy street
alongside them.

 “Only on our Virginia Civil War battlefields were there
more killings than in this field right behind us,” said Dale Brumfield,
representing Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

 At the vigil in Norfolk at City Hall Plaza, near the city’s
jail, Father Jim Curran, pastor of the Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate
Conception in Norfolk, spoke about Catholic teaching against the death penalty,
stressing that Pope Francis has said it is inadmissible “and there can be
no stepping back from that position.”

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Virginia
has executed more people in its history than any other state. The state carried
out its first execution in 1608. In modern times, since the U.S. Supreme Court
reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Virginia follows Texas as the state with
the most executions.

Virginia’s last execution took place in 2017. Currently, two
people are on the state’s death row but under proposed legislation, their
sentences would be converted to life in prison without parole.

In mid-January, the executive director of the Virginia
Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the state’s bishops, said he was
pleased bipartisan support is growing for ending Virginia’s death penalty.

“With our modern and advanced criminal justice system,
we have other ways to provide punishment and protect society, without resorting
to executions,” said Jeff Caruso, the conference’s executive director.
“We hope this will be the year to enact death penalty abolition
here.”

In his annual “State of the Commonwealth” address
Jan. 13, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said he would support a bill just
introduced in the General Assembly to abolish the death penalty, including for
those persons currently under a death sentence.

He also cited racial injustices in the criminal justice
system as a reason to end executions.

The death penalty bill was approved by the Senate Judiciary
Committee Jan. 18 and must be approved by the Senate Finance Committee before
it can be considered by the full Senate. Companion bills in the House of
Delegates are awaiting committee approval.

The day of the prayer vigils, Richmond Commonwealth’s
Attorney Colette McEachin said her office supports the bill to abolish the
death penalty and her office will not seek any death sentences.

In a statement she said: “The question is not whether
someone ‘deserves’ to die because of the depravity of their act, but whether we
as a society are so convinced of the infallibility of our decisions that we
should sentence an individual to death.”

She also said “death should not be imposed unless
society can guarantee that new evidence will never prove that sentence
incorrect. That guarantee cannot exist. Life in prison without parole — in
effect, being sentenced to die in prison by the community you harmed — is a
significant and just punishment.”

If Virginia abolishes the death penalty, it will join 22
other states that no longer use capital punishment. Three states have a
moratorium on it.

 

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